EVENTS

I forgot to look at their Tax Policy page

So now I’ve looked at it.

This is what it is; it is this.

Policy Recommendations on Tax Policy

[an image of a tax form with a pen lying across it]

The same tax rules should apply to all non-profit organizations, whether religious or secular. Because of separation of church and state, government should not provide tax loopholes to religious organizations, or excuse them from the disclosures that non-religious organizations must make.

From Tony Judt’s excellent ‘Ill Fares the Land': ‘Sadly, contemporary intellectuals have shown remarkably little informed interest in the nitty-gritty of public policy, preferring to intervene or protest on ethically-defined topics where the choices seem clearer. This has left debates on the way we ought to govern ourselves to policy specialists and “think tanks”, where unconventional opinion rarely finds a place and the public are largely excluded.’ It seems relevant in two respects: the obvious lack of any real understanding of political realities, and the seeming desire to become yet another think tank whose interest is only in pushing out predictable opinions.
Now I have seen the whole line-up of people involved, as opposed only to those in the ‘Last Supper’ photograph, there are obviously people one respects, but, really, those vague and hopeful proposals are no more than vague and hopeful – it is amazing that such intelligent people cannot do better. I notice also that in addition to the participants being mostly Anglophone, male and ‘Caucasian’, they are mostly people who are connected with science and who are, of course, card-carrying ‘gnu atheists’. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but there really does need to be a clear distinction made between ‘secularism’ and ‘atheism’ (I seem to recall Jerry Coyne confusing the two some years ago); otherwise, atheism/secularism becomes a mere sect, on a level with any religious sect and competing with religious sects – in fact, this already seems to be the case, particularly in the States, where it seems to be important to wear one’s beliefs on one’s sleeve. This is dangerous, since if atheists behave just like members of a religious sect, it plays into the hands of the religious, and most important it undermines secularism, which is not atheistical at all, but is meant to create a tolerant society.
Another matter is that the greatest danger to our freedoms, particularly in the US and the UK comes from policies that lead to a widening gap between rich and poor and a denial of any notion of fairness in society. The immiseration of more and more people – as ‘wealth accumulates, and men decay’ (Oliver Goldsmith, quoted by Judt) – provides fertile ground for the spread of precisely those extreme religious and political (eg Communist, but more likely Fascist in present circumstances) that this ‘Global’ think-tank dislike, but so far as I can see the problem is not considered pressing or relevant enough for them to address it. They prefer the easy and obvious targets they are comfortable with. They are not true radicals.

I thought they were supposed to be ‘Global’, have they not noticed that most countries don’t have even a pretense at separating religion from government? In fact the US is quite unusual in having something like the establishment clause. Wish we had that here in the UK, but instead we’ve got bishops voting to amend or block laws.